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Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term risks begins

393 points by gjsman-1000 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  This was fixed, thank you!
vaxitgood 4y ago
- scohesc 4y ago
hitpointdrew 4y ago
Seems like this should have been a requirement before any emergency use authorization, and certainly before any mandates. The fact that this research is just now being done ought to be enough to immediately revoke the FDA emergency use authorizations and pull the product from the shelves. The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at every level. The erosion of trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect consumers has alone done exponentially more damage than the virus it self. We now have victims of vaccine injury so scared of societal backlash they don't speak out, and doctors so scared of losing their license/job they ignore the evidence in front of them.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  I think most people misunderstand the point of emergency use. It was an emergency. At the time the vaccine got authorized, we were in a middle of a pandemic, millions of people with no immunity were getting sick, and we couldn't stop the spread even with heavy restrictions. It was clear that we will all have some immunity eventually. The point of the emergency use of vaccine was to give people immunity in a way that wasn't as bad at getting sick. Wait too much, and the vaccine would have been mostly useless. It was a game of how much uncertainty we allow vs how much more deaths if we do nothing. And I think the (fairly conservative) bet saved millions, maybe we could have saved a bit more if we actually vaccinated people before the end of phase 3. We are now in the end game, and the rules have changed. We are now almost all immunized in one way or another, the virus is now optimized for immune escape instead of raw speed, thankfully making it less deadly in the process. Because of that, the way we approach vaccination needs to change too. We can't compare today's situation with the beginning of 2021.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  As soon as the EUAs were issued, the vaccine manufacturers shut down clinical trial followup and, in many cases, allowed vaccination of the control branch of the trials. Same for Paxlovid, where support for independent trials was refused.
  - throwaway049 4y ago
    'allowed vaccination of the control branch' People in the control branch were told they were controls so that they had the option to get the newly-authorized vaccine for real. Standard practice for trials that go well.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      And so the long term effects of the treatment are uncontrolled. I think it's standard practice for therapeutics, but not for vaccines?
  - pieter_mj 4y ago
    I, probably with many others, didn't realize this could be the consequence of an EUA until you mentioned it here. Thank you.
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
      It's not specific to EUA, this is commonly done when a Phase 3 trial shows a clear benefit. Essentially, once you're sure a medicine confers a real benefit, it becomes unethical to deny it to the control branch any longer.
  - oezi 4y ago
    Citation?
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  Still glad I took my chances with the vaccine: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/briefing/omicron-deaths-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/brie...
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Seeing how family who got infected prior to vaccine availability are still suffering brain fog and lack of energy even now, I am too. The long term effects of covid concern me far more than those of the vaccine do.
    - twerkmonsta 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - Enginerrrd 4y ago
        I'm glad the emergency use authorization allowed people who are interested to get the vaccine. I don't think mandates were ever appropriate, and I think people should also have had a right to NOT get the vaccine. The emergency use authorization seemed absolutely like the appropriate course of action given the circumstances.
    - vikingerik 4y ago
      Remember the right comparison regarding apparent long-Covid: What proportion of people would self-report brain fog and lack of energy anyway, with nothing to do with Covid?
      - AnthonBerg 4y ago
        This sort of claim has been made after a study was released that took the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as the source of thruth for whether people had gotten COVID-19. This sort of claim can’t be made on that basis because a lot of people do not produce antibodies after infection. Paper: “Predictors of Nonseroconversion after SARS-CoV-2 Infection” – https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article Abstract: “Not all persons recovering from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection develop SARS-CoV-2–specific antibodies. We show that nonseroconversion is associated with younger age and higher reverse transcription PCR cycle threshold values and identify SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in the nasopharynx as a major correlate of the systemic antibody response.” Please note that this was already known when the study which is taken to show that people are imagining long COVID was published. It’s not a good study. Quite a bit of research has been done since then which further pins down the fact that long COVID is very real and how to diagnose it with biomarkers, which turn out to correspond very well with people saying that a SARS-CoV-2 infection messed them up. Please also consider how harshly judgemental it appears when someone accuses a large number of people of imagining or making up a severe and disabling condition. You have to be very certain.
- yucky 4y ago
  The actual FDA approval letter[0] calls out in the document that all long term testing will not be completed until May 2027. Pointing that out has always gotten one branded as an antivaxx conspiracy nutter, rather than a person who might want to ensure that, well, long term testing data is actually in before injecting something into their bodies. [0] https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
  - bluGill 4y ago
    > long term testing data is actually in before injecting something into their bodies. You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. There may be concerning long term effects, but keep persepcive, the worst possible case is still better than the known case of COVID. And of course long term studies on COVID are also still in progress with all signs pointing to even more bad effects of COVID coming out in the coming years.
    - yucky 4y ago
      You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. That is actually yet to be determined, which is the point. And I only mean that as it relates to specific demographic cohorts, not overall. If I were elderly, diabetic, immunocompromised etc. I don't think I'd hesitate. But the data I've seen on my demographic cohort is a toss-up at best, or even shows the vaccine to be riskier.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      > You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. You don't know that, because we don't know what the "long term effects of the vaccine" actually are.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        That's true in both directions.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > Seems like this should have been a requirement before any emergency use authorization Well... if you think that there's a case for an emergency use authorization, then you kind of can't wait to determine long-term risks. If there's a Covid epidemic threatening to kill millions of people in 2019, you can't wait for a study of long-term consequences that terminates in 2027. You have to decide with the information you have in 2019. Was there a case for an emergency use authorization? Covid did in fact kill millions of people, so arguably yes. > ... and certainly before any mandates. Yeah, there I'm with you.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  > The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at every level. Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/06/covid-19-vaccines-saved-estimated-20-million-lives-1-year https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/06/covid-19... > The erosion of trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect consumers has alone done exponentially more damage than the virus it self. Source needed. Reading these comments, one would think nobody ever died of COVID. One would think we didn't have hospitals crammed to the gills with them.
  - anon291 4y ago
    > Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved: There is no reason to expect 20 million people in the United States would have died if we had taken a european approach to vaccination approvals.
    - frant-hartm 4y ago
      What was different in EU? Didn't we approve the same vaccines few weeks later?
      - anon291 4y ago
        In certain countries of the EU, boosters are not approved for younger people.
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        The president was not promoting snake oil, for example.
        LilBytes 4y ago
        Kind way of describing bleach.
    - 4y ago
- queuebert 4y ago
  Covid has killed millions. How many have died of myocarditis? While I agree with your sentiment, it's hyperbolic to claim the vaccine has done "exponentially more damage than the virus".
  - anon291 4y ago
    - flir 4y ago
      Well that's surgery out the window.
    - TehCorwiz 4y ago
      Chemo Therapy is literally poisoning you just enough to kill the cancer. The anti-arthritis medications I take cause terrible side effects. These options are still better than the underlying problems. Throwing out pithy feel good quotes doesn't capture the nuance of the line that doctors walk when trying to treat illnesses. "Do no harm" is the ideal. In reality it's to do less harm than the disease.
      - chedca21 4y ago
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        Ioannidis was wrong, though. Drastically so. Analyzing excess deaths make it very clear it's not the same severity as severe flu; see the chart half-way down on https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm. At the time, he wrote (https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...): > Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop? It did exactly that.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Fomite 4y ago
    Flu shots target several strains of one virus, not several viruses. There is no credible epidemiologist who wouldn't call the COVID-19 vaccines a vaccine. And there are a number of vaccines with limited reduction in transmission but effectiveness against more severe outcomes.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  Isn't he risk of myocarditis actually higher if you get infected with covid compared with getting a covid vaccine? https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
  - Fomite 4y ago
    It is. With the exception of a very narrow age range of young men, the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease alone, even ignoring all other outcomes.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      > the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease alone Wait, what? As in people should just take it as a prophylactic for heart disease, without even taking covid into consideration? It seems like this would be shouted from the rooftops if it were true.
      - Fomite 4y ago
        No - it's protective against negative COVID-19 outcomes just if you consider cardiovascular outcomes, ignoring all the others.
    - wiredearp 4y ago
      Young men on the other hand appear to face the biggest increase in COVID related heart attacks according to https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked-to-spike-in-heart-attacks/ https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked..., so perhaps the vaccine remains their best option.
      - Fomite 4y ago
        Indeed. In that group, it's merely...murky...rather than "This is definitively a bad idea".
      - 4y ago
- spfzero 4y ago
  It also seems like, in the absence of assurance of long-term safety, you would recommend the vaccine for at-risk groups only. It's known now that the risk to young people (under 19) is minimal: IFR < 3/1,000,000. And that was during the much more dangerous early strain of Covid-19, not the ones circulating now. Yet here we are in 2022 with a recommendation from the CDC to vaccinate ages 5 and up, regardless of health condition.
  - xracy 4y ago
    It is wild to me that people look at a number like 3/1,000,000 and don't think wow, that's 1900 Children who could die from something we have a vaccine for, that actively prevents the cause. Also, can you imagine losing a child to something that was preventable? You can play numbers and statistics all day, but we're talking about children's lives. You're probably not a parent? But for reference, go find examples of people who are parents that have lost children to some cause, and see what they're doing now? I would bet 9/10 times they're trying to prevent that from happening to others.
    - dwmbt 4y ago
      same. it's also interesting that many of the folks commenting are not likely to be in the most vulnerable group at risk of developing myocarditis from the vaccine [0] -- that unfortunate category is one that i belong to. as a young man, i spoke about this risk nearly a year ago to the tee [1]. since then, i've also found out i am particularly vulnerable, as i had a history of heart issues as a young child (heart murmer -> arrhythmia). it will be nice to see more data available, but i don't regret any of the vaccines in the slightest. there are plenty of comments here that speak to the general age recommendation other countries have provided, but i have yet to see people connect the other MAJOR group of people that should, by all means, totally, 100% consider getting their nth vaccination -> anyone with a comorbidity! if you are a young man with diabetes, the risks you face from the vaccine vs a covid infection are no longer as murky. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221924#29223881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221924#29223881
    - 4y ago
- oezi 4y ago
  No, that gets it totally backwards. The miniscule risks of the vaccine are blown out of proportion by bad reporting and people reading the statistics wrong. In converse: we should have skipped phase 3 trials (effectivity) and should have started vaccination after safety was approved. If anything the vaccination campaign has shown that sometimes acting fast can be tremendously helpful.
  - 35amxn35 4y ago
    [dead]
- speeder 4y ago
  I think now I can finally write this in public: I didn't take COVID vaccine at all, because for coincidental reasons, my dad ended taking it first. Despite the fact he is already 50+ he had really severe, but thankfully mostly temporary cardiac side effects (mostly, because even months later he needed to go to his cardiologist and change his cardiac-related medicine, because since the vaccine his blood levels changed and he kept having weird symptoms). Since my dad had his health go so poorly after the vaccine, I decided to not risk it, specially considering my existing conditions.
- dempseye 4y ago
  The erosion of trust is actually a good thing, because those institutions are undeserving of trust.
- TheBigSalad 4y ago
  You do realize the virus was like super deadly and stuff, right?
origin_path 4y ago
I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Some time in 2021 there was a story about COVID vaccines and heart issues here on HN. The comments filled up with people saying that ever since they'd got their shots they were experiencing new heart-related symptoms they'd never had previously like permanently racing heartbeats, palpitations/fluttering, inability to do exercise and more. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to re-find that discussion. I also have a good friend who works in IT who had a heart attack in the weeks after his shots, but he refused to believe that's what happened and never went in to get diagnosed (the symptoms were an exact match however). Some rough calculations indicate the numbers affected by this kind of (hopefully) low level heart damage seem much higher than claimed. They say of the "hundreds of millions" of shots there are only 1000 cases of diagnosed heart damage from the vaccines. Call it 1000/100,000,000 or one in a million. There are approx 5M readers of Hacker News per month, so far less per day. Of those only a tiny handful have accounts and post comments. If their numbers are right then there should be ~no HN commenters with post-vaccine heart problems but this thread filled up with people posting their own experiences of such a thing. Then there's also the other health problems. My gfs friends who took it have been complaining that they seem to get sick with colds/fluey things way more frequently since the shots, I heard similar complaints from a couple of old coworkers. One of those girls complaining of frequent sickness also reported disrupted menstruation but the doctors have ignored it all because as far as they are concerned, the vaccines are 'perfectly safe'.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  I, anecdotally, can report the same. Anecdotally, it seems doctors are drowning in too much paperwork already to be bothered filing reports, as well as suffering from denial that this could be an issue (also preventing filing a report).
- rozap 4y ago
  Me too. A few days after the latest booster I had some really weird heart palpitations while resting, and I was feeling dizzy with chest/shoulder pain after some moderate exercise. I've stopped exercising which sucks, but will ease back into it. But there's a history of arrhythmia in my family (heart issue killed my dad at a young age), so that's probably a big risk factor, and I'm in the "young male" risk group. I don't know if I should keep getting boosters or risk a potentially worse outcome from covid, which I haven't had yet, though I've been very exposed to.
sfusato 4y ago
Norway recommends booster doses for 65+ [0], Denmark for 50+ [1], Australia for 50+ [2], Sweeden for 65+ [3], Finland for 65+ [4]. United States recommends booster does for 5+ [5]. "The (Florida) State Surgeon General now recommends against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old." [6] [0] https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirus-immunisation-programme/coronavirus-vaccine/ https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirus-immunisation-p... [1] https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Vaccination-against-COVID-19 https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Vaccination-against... [2] https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022/08/atagi-recommendations-on-the-use-of-a-booster-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine.pdf https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022... [3] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/vaccination-against-covid-19/order-of-priority-for-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency... [4] https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-recommends-coronavirus-vaccine-booster-for-older-people-and-risk-groups-this-autumn https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-recommends-coronavirus-... [5] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-t... [6] https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221007-guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-doc.pdf https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Worth noting, the Florida Surgeon General's opinion was lambasted in the mainstream media as him embracing conspiracy theories (and there is some interesting added context there as to why they believe so). Which... maybe two things are true at once. Perhaps he was - but also, perhaps his stance is not that radical. Radical compared to most Surgeon Generals in the United States; but on an international level? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-covid-vaccines-desantis-surgeon-general/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-c... https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-10-12/scientists-dispute-the-floridas-surgeon-generals-latest-covid-19-vaccine-guidance-for-young-men https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-10-12... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/11/medical-experts-reject-florida-surgeon-generals-covid-vaccine-guidance-00061352 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/11/medical-experts-rej... https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-pan-analysis-floridas-surgeon-general-posted-covid/story?id=91294952 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-pan-analysis-florid... https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/10/15/they-are-right-what-floridas-surgeon-general-got-wrong-letters/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/10/15/they-are-right-w...
taolegal 4y ago
The same people who wouldn't be charitable with, say, Exxon, are bending over backwards to defend global pharmaceuticals. Exxon has an interest in minimizing (disregarding) the harmful effects of their products and same goes for Pfizer & friends who's got every govt funneling money to them seemingly without limit.
- sn0w_crash 4y ago
  Remember Exxon has duped those same people into thinking they are a “good” company They rank higher than Tesla on ESG ratings. Yes, Exxon.
  - taolegal 4y ago
- mberning 4y ago
  It’s incredible how they managed to rehab their image almost overnight. Anybody remember the bextra scandal? Yeah, these are the same corrupt corporations.
  - lispisok 4y ago
    We went from finding out pharma companies exploded the opiate epidemic to people getting tattoos of the brand of covid vaccine they got in a few years. Just because pharma companies make some useful products does not make them good actors. Of course Pfizer is going to say everybody needs another covid booster shot. Every time they convince people they need another it's billions in revenue.
    - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
      do you have a link? google just leads to stuff about how long to wait with a tattoo after vaccination.
      - 4y ago
robomartin 4y ago
One of my kids, 15 at the time, was one of the reported cases of myocarditis. At the time of his hospitalization he was one out of 700 cases. He was in the hospital for two weeks. While under observation after his release, we have not seen indications of lasting damage. No way to know what the future holds. So far, so good. We are still not anti-vax at all. In fact, I might go for my next booster today. The one thing that angers me is that this incident cost us $10K. Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400 PER MONTH, did not cover it. We have no recourse whatsoever for this incident and any future care requirements.
- arein3 4y ago
  - sfusato 4y ago
    There's plenty of would-do-it-again testimonials from a hospital bed caused by a vaccine injury/side effect. There's a famous Mark Twain quote that comes to mind.
    - arein3 4y ago
      A theory proposed by Charles Darwin comes to mind.
      - lob_it 4y ago
        Was that "empathy equals manufactured crisis cubed"? Science is hard :p
    - floor2 4y ago
      Making the statistically best choice is still the best choice even if you get an undesired outcome. Good poker players can lose all their chips at the table to an unlucky draw and walk away knowing that they made the right play and that they'd do it again, even if they got unlucky on the river card. Good basketball coaches will still draw up plays to get the ball into the hands of their best shooter at the end of the game even if they miss sometimes. If you're choosing between option A that has a 0.0001% chance of hurting you and option B that has a 10% chance of hurting you, and you choose A and still get hurt, that doesn't mean you made the wrong choice or that if you have it to do over again you should choose B.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
Cool, now what's the incidence of Myocarditis and similar after COVID-19 infection? It's possible that such a vaccine causes a number of such cases, and still prevents a much larger number of them. In fact it also seems to be true in this case. Discussing the vaccines out of this context, is scaremongering. You're much better off taking your chances with the COVID-19 vaccine than taking your chances unvaccinated. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001957 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001957
- hitpointdrew 4y ago
  According to this study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ there is no increase in Myocarditis cases among unvaccinated people who have contracted Covid-19. This study tracked 196,992 people which is a huge number, so the data here is quite good and clear. Contracting Covid-19 does not put you at increased risk for Myocarditis, the same cannot be said when evaluating a population that simply received the vaccination.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Now, to balance between you and the OP: Great, Covid looks like it won't give me myocarditis. It can still kill me, though. So now we have to balance a "may give me myocarditis" vaccine against a "may kill me, but won't give me myocarditis" virus. You can't make the trade-off solely on myocarditis.
    - sfusato 4y ago
      You forgot the "may give me myocarditis (and covid might still kill me)" on one end of the balance though.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        Then we have to account for the much reduced risk of that though. sure it can, but relative risk is important. Covid when vaccinated is far more likely to kill you than all possible combinations of the vaccine and whatever else.
marsven_422 4y ago
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
[flagged]
- chedca21 4y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants-55-years-process-foia-request-over-vaccine-data-2021-11-18/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...
  - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
    This is from a year ago. Please provide some context to your reply.
nradov 4y ago
One mouse study found that vaccine injection without aspiration did significantly increase the risk of adverse cardiac events such as myocarditis. That research hasn't been reproduced in humans but this area deserves further investigation. As per CDC guidelines, US healthcare providers don't routinely aspirate prior to intramuscular injection. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab941 https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab941 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43440-022-00361-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43440-022-00361-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-141119 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-141119 https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/administration.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/admi...
- ambicapter 4y ago
  aspiration here means?
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    It means after inserting the needle you draw back on the plunger to see if any blood is drawn into the syringe. If so it means you hit a vein and should reposition the needle because the shot is meant to go into the muscle rather than directly into a vein.
- chedca21 4y ago
  And young male athletes with the greatest development of blood supply in the deltoid represent the most common demographic affected by acute cardiovascular injury post vaccine. Coincidence? The vaccines were not built to be aspirated, once the plunger is up they can not be reset. It represents a fundamental lapse in standard harm reduction. Also "wait 15 mins to see if emergency care is needed" could well have been replaced by allergy screening given before the injection. Many thousands of cases of anaphylaxis from the shot have been documented some of which were fatal, all avoidable with allergy screening which is practically free.
  - AnthonBerg 4y ago
    I have asked for aspiration when I was vaccinated, all four times. I’ve had Pfizer and Moderna. It was no problem. There exist syringes which the injection cannot be aspirated with, but those weren’t used when I was being vaccinated. — Strong agreement on the concern about deltoid vasculature. (I have direct, lived experience with someone at risk of death from a substance going into a capillary which was supposed to stay under the skin on injection. It happens. It’s real. Some doctors will claim it’s “impossible”, which is obviously false when you look into it. The datasheet that came with the injector needles even state that they’re “over 99.5 accurate in delivering a subcutaneous injection”. I forget the exact phrasing. It means that statistically, 1 in 200 injections tends to go into a capillary.) — Also, it’s interesting to look into the reasons why aspiration was removed from standard practice. In a nutshell, it’s because of two things: 1: Some syringes exist which cannot be aspirated with. 2: Aspiration can be painful for infants and is tricky to perform because they are small and they struggle. These are the reasons why aspiration was essentially removed from clinical practice. Really. Those are the reasons. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s obviously harmful that aspiration was stopped. The papers the grandparent post links to are good.
ivraatiems 4y ago
I would just like us all to stop pretending that any of one's fear of COVID or skepticism of vaccines or distrust of whoever or whatever is about rational calculated risks. It's about how we feel, so let's talk about that. Look, everyone is scared of doing something until they're scared of not doing it. Everyone distrusts government until they trust it, and distrusts pharma until they trust it. Some people will wear their mask in the grocery store even though it's a cloth mask that's as good as doing nothing because now it feels weird not to. Some people won't take the COVID vaccine but they'll happily take remdesivir and ivermectin. (Who do you think makes remdesivir and ivermectin?) Some people will happily go to an indoor comic convention that's an hour's drive from them, but not to an outdoor wedding, because it would mean getting on a plane (this actually happened with a family member of mine and I am not over it). All of which is to say that what people are really doing is going with their gut. If your gut instinct is "COVID's not a big deal", then of course taking an emergency-use-authorized vaccine for it seems risky. If your gut instinct is "COVID is dangerous and deadly", you'll take anything you can get. Now that things are subsiding, and the fear is waning, I read an article like this and I think "hmm, that does seem bad, we should look into it, but also I am gonna keep doing what I'm doing and getting my COVID vaccine because it seems like it's helping." On the other hand, you have people who are literally dying of COVID who are still relieved they were able to dodge getting the vaccine because it felt scary to get a not-fully-tested drug. So I'm pro-vaccine because they seem like a good idea and my experiences with them (four shots so far) have been positive, in that my side effects were limited and I know there were situations where I could have gotten COVID and I didn't. (And when I did get COVID, it was extremely mild.) Who's to say how I'd have felt if I were one of the few cases of myocarditis out there? Who's to say how I would've felt if I'd had mild COVID and recovered from it pre-vaccine? What if I'd been hospitalized with COVID pre-vaccine? Can we just admit this isn't about logic or statistics, and never was? It was always a persuasion game either way.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Having some uncertainty around novel things seems reasonable. We were all uncertain around COVID and around new vaccines using a novel mechanism. People balanced those uncertainties differently. I took the course of asking people I generally trusted for their opinion and concluded that taking the vaccines (3 for me so far, plus a bout of naturally-acquired resistance via infection) was indicated. There were other doctors whom I knew before COVID was a thing who were recommending ivermectin. If that was your doctor, why wouldn't you believe them just like I believed the doctors that I had more association with? My gut tells me "be skeptical of novel things, but balance that skepticism a bit by asking people whom you trust to have greater knowledge on the topic, ultimately making the best decision you can".
Kalanos 4y ago
my heart has hurt since the vaccine
- TheHypnotist 4y ago
  Well, case closed then.
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  I've also had chest pains.
loeg 4y ago
- no_butterscotch 4y ago
  > This thread is, predictably, a complete shit show. Flag and move on. Is there a way to counter-flag? People who are passionate about discussing some topic may get heated but I don't think that's a good reason for a Reddit-style "thread locked by mods".
  - generalizations 4y ago
    You can 'vouch' for the thread (or a comment), but only after it's been marked as flagged. Personally I think that's unbalanced, since flags accumulate for a longer and more visible period than when a thread can be vouched for.
- preordained 4y ago
  Nope. Let discussion happen as it will in the cold light of day.
- warning26 4y ago
  Well you see, my [insert relative] had [bad thing happen] thus proving that [antivax talking point]. I've summarized every comment in this thread to save you some time for your busy monday morning.
  - generalizations 4y ago
    Not really, unless you're only reading the threads that match your bias. Most of the higher-voted top-level comments are fairly substantial...unlike yours.
coinbasetwwa 4y ago
not_good_coder 4y ago
The developer of the vaccine should not sponsor this adverse effects trial.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Careful, the news told me that's what conspiracy theorists would say.
- Sugimot0 4y ago
  It's kind of sad cause ideally the company using a portion of the money they made on the product, to study adverse effects from the product, is the responsible and transparent thing to do. I wonder what options there are for ensuring/verifying that this kind of research is not swayed or influenced by the sponsors.
coinbasetwwa 4y ago
[flagged]
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  Polio - people have forgotten rows of kids in iron lungs - perhaps you should read some history books and forget the crypto.
  - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
    Smallpox and other random stuff exists too what does that have to do with this conversation?
  - nomel 4y ago
    How is polio related to covid?
    - tibbydudeza 4y ago
      That vaccines actually work.
      - nomel 4y ago
        I don't think polio and kids is a good example here, since the COVID vaccine isn't sterilizing like polio, meaning boosters are required, which were never approved for kids because they failed to prove reasonable efficacy. Most kids haven't been vaccinated for COVID in years, and have little protection against it, beyond the continuous exposure now present in the school systems.
  - sfusato 4y ago
    I highly recommend "Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History".
alerighi 4y ago
I think that all this COVID stuff was everything opposite than using science, starting from the people, including government, taking of "trusting science". Science is not a religion, and we don't have to believe in it. Instead we need to be critic, conduct experiments, evaluate our thesis, put everything into discussion. Something we didn't, because you are a fool if you have doubts about vaccines, if you talk about negative effects, they are 100% safe and you are an ignorant. This is the contrary of doing science. We didn't studied these vaccines enough, we didn't take for serious people lamenting adverse reactions, we did hide the news about that because we feared people not taking the vaccine. Is this science? It's not. If you look at the news, vaccines are 100% safe and doesn't have any side effect. You ask people that got that, you get another opinion. Me too after the third dose (that I wouldn't had got if I wasn't forced to do so by our "democratic" government, no wonder here in Italy last elections won the "fascists", if these are the democratic people) I had serious side effects, I was basically not feeling well for a week. To take into prospective, when I got COVID in March 2020 when it was still a new thing I only got a slight fever for two days, nothing compared of the effect of the vaccine itself...
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  Correct, political science displaced science so quickly. Dark days are ahead unless the public is informed and able to resist. How did they force you to take a booster? Was it in order to keep your job?
- leetrout 4y ago
  > I had serious side effects, I was basically not feeling well for a week Would you care to elaborate? I had really bad brain fog.
  - nomel 4y ago
    Not him, but I had arm pain for over a year, under the injection, along with extreme weakness in a particular muscle/motion, from the first shot. I couldn’t sleep on that side at all, and could barely sleep on the other. It eventually went away, but I was terrified it was permanent. I did not get the boosters. I’ve had people say I’m anti-vax, from this.
Guthur 4y ago
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Some added information: Some might wonder, won't the US government pay me if I am injured (as unlikely as that is)? For example, the young man the article talks about as having been injured? Yes - there is a fund, the CICP (Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program). However, your odds of getting paid are basically nil, as an adult; due to an extremely high standard for proving causation, lack of awareness, and limited claim time (1 year from date of vaccination). So if you have a long-term effect after, say, 3 years needing compensation, you won't be paid. "As of October 1, 2022, the CICP has partially compensated one COVID-19 countermeasure claim. There are potentially additional expenses to be calculated for this claim, therefore, the claim is still in the “Pending” compensation status. Forty-seven COVID-19 countermeasure claims have been denied compensation because the standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered injury was not sustained. Six COVID-19 countermeasure claims, all of which are COVID-19 vaccine claims, have been determined eligible for compensation and are pending a review of eligible expenses. One eligible claim is the result of anaphylaxis, and five claims are the result of myocarditis." Six payouts as of October 1st, 2022. https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data
shingle 4y ago
I can add my experience to this thread, as I was diagnosed with "atypical" pericarditis a little over a week after my first Pfizer shot. This started with chest pains, gradually increasing over the course of a day or two before I went to the hospital. I had to ask them to test for myopericarditis, because they were pretty much only considering an embolism or a panic attack. In that sense I was lucky that I had read a paper a month or so before, indicating young men (such as myself) as having an increased risk after Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccination. After diagnosis I had to go through a 3-month medication regimen which, I'll be honest, wasn't all that fun for my intestinal tract. Thankfully I was deemed healthy after half a year, with low probability of lasting damage. Yet, the psychological weight of being confronted with heart disease in your mid-twenties is heavy. My opinions on vaccinations haven't really changed, though I think the legal and societal pressure to get everyone vaccinated was out of line and that opinion has gotten stronger. Especially after knowing that vaccination doesn't affects transmission as much as they hoped, I expected them to focus much more heavily on the at-risk groups, but that didn't happen. The worst part about all of this though is the obstinate denial my cardiologists had of any possible relation between my Pfizer shot and the pericarditis. They'd point to the fact that young men can develop myopericarditis without vaccination. This is true, though it's almost always the result of an infection, and in my region of the world the vast majority of these cases result from flu infections. However, when I had my diagnosis there were barely any flu cases in the country, it just wasn't the season, and most of all I wasn't ill. Pointing to the close proximity to the vaccination was met with immediate and absolute denial. I think that's what bothered me most: I did my part, I tried to protect society by getting a shot, but when confronted with negative fall-out I had to fight for a diagnosis and was pretty much laughed out of the room for suggesting a relation to the booster. I don't think I've processed this yet. It really feels like I did everything I was told, giving up much of my hobbies, social life etc., but when my health was on the line... "Ho pal, can't be saying anything that could be contorted into criticism of vaccination". Little of it seemed "fair".
- oliv__ 4y ago
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midislack 4y ago
Conspiracy theorists keep being proved correct. Experts say, that’s dangerous.
phtrivier 4y ago
Just so we now for next time: what is the proper way to express concerns about _this_ kind of things with enough nuance and moderation so as not to be automatically considered an anti-scientist tin foil hat ? What is the scientifically acceptable way to phrase "I'm not concerned about BigPharma planting 5G chips in my future children's eyeballs to turn them into communist ; but I'm very concerned about blind spots during testing and biases in protocol and just plain bad luck that made us miss something ?" Maybe I just write too much software for a living, but my only certitude was that something, somewhere, was going to break. At least I can TDD the hell out of my paranoia. Don't let me write health policy, ever. Sidenode: if this kid had chosen the wrong profession in the wrong country, he would now be facing either "getting a couple of other shot" or "loosing its job". If he had made a tiktok video about his problems, or a facebook post, or a twitter thread, etc... at some point it would have been flagged, and it would have only garnered the attention of the worst possible scammers. And, worst of all, I'm pretty sure his grandmother would now refuse to get boosted. Talk about loose-loose :/
- daliz 4y ago
  You are completely right. People who expressed concerns or some doubts just a few months ago were attacked, downvoted, silenced and socially outcast. This is not science. This is the opposite of science.
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    Well, at the peak of the epidemics, there was a whole industry devoted to claiming the most bogus things and preventing the people with the highest risk / benefit ratio from taking their shots. I made fun of the most hilarious of them too. That did not make me any less scared of the "oooops" moment. This will get worse (myocarditis today, menstural cycles tomorrow, maybe strokes and cancer later ?), then worse (vast number of people completely loosing faith into their docs and letting a much worse epidemy settle), then worse, before it gets... well, before life goes on and we mostly forget, as it has ever done and as we ever did, I suppose ?
  - tsol 4y ago
    People don't care about being scientifically honest. If we did, more people would be annoyed by internet atheists championing science above all else. Pushing science as the end all be all path to knowledge isn't the wholesome thing it seems. Some people take it too far and turn it into a cult
6nf 4y ago
We knew this 18 months ago when Israel first released their results after vaccinating 7 million of their people. But talking about it on Facebook or Youtube got you yeeted.
puffoflogic 4y ago
Why bother with expensive research when the HN comment section has it all figured out? The vaccines don't cause myocarditis, and if they do then it's not as bad as what COVID causes, and if it is well COVID also causes it anyways so who cares, and if it doesn't then at least the vaccines stop transmission, and if they don't then at least they save your life, and if they don't then at least we believe The Science! Just a waste of money. The Science is settled.
shadowgovt 4y ago
If the risk of myocarditis after covid vaccination is lower than the risk of hospitalization due to covid infection, mandating vaccination is still good public policy. It ultimately shifts the risk around, it is true, but it still improves the odds of survival for the people who will contract myocarditis also, because there was significant risk of covid crashing the medical infrastructure. This is the part of the story people seem to forget... It wasn't the primary risk of fatalities due to covid that triggered mandatory quarantine and vaccination policies, it was the threat of saturating healthcare facilities to the point where people would die of myriad preventable conditions. In the United States, we are still short-handed because nurses retired and nobody is stepping up to replace them.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  The question is whether or not you can ever morally coerce someone to inject something into their body.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's an interesting question but (at least in the US) a culturally very well-settled one. There's an extremely long history of vaccination being required for participation in various aspects of society, from the military to public education. During the pandemic, it broadened to "presence in office." The three tools a society has to defend against rampant disease are hygiene, vaccination, and quarantine. Those who cannot or will not participate in the first two may, if necessary, be handled via the third, and this is pretty bog-standard "How not to have a whole city suffer from typhoid" stuff. As we're talking morality and not the law: there's nothing immoral about "No shirt, no shoes, no service."
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      > It's an interesting question but (at least in the US) a culturally very well-settled one. The fact that people disagree means that it is not.
annadane 4y ago
Lots of suspiciously downvoted comments here.
drummer 4y ago
Here are two books everyone should read: https://archive.org/details/b2136140x https://archive.org/details/b2136140x https://archive.org/details/confessions-of-a-medical-heretic/ https://archive.org/details/confessions-of-a-medical-heretic...
dayvid 4y ago
My main question is if the vaccine side effects are just a much milder version of what would happen if you got COVID as opposed to something vaccine specific. If that's the case, then there would be more myocarditis issues from people not vaccinating. I haven't received a straight answer on this.
- mrtesthah 4y ago
  >...then there would be more myocarditis issues from people not vaccinating... Yes. Myocarditis seven times more likely with COVID-19 than vaccines https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967801 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967801 Myocarditis Risk 17 Times Higher for Unvaccinated Patients Ages 12-30 Who Get COVID-19 Than COVID-Vaccinated Patients https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/myocarditis-risk-17-times-higher-for-unvaccinated-patients-ages-12-30-who-get-covid-19-than-covid-vaccinated-patients https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/myocarditis-risk-17-ti... Myocarditis risk significantly higher after COVID-19 infection vs. after a COVID-19 vaccine | American Heart Association https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significantly-higher-after-covid-19-infection-vs-after-a-covid-19-vaccine https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significant...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    I wonder why those studies differ from this one, that did not find a higher incidence in myocarditis in COVID patients. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
    - russdill 4y ago
      The numbers in this study end up being relatively small as there are only 200k people involved. "Nine post-COVID-19 patients developed myocarditis".
    - mrtesthah 4y ago
entwife 4y ago
It is possible to get a COVID antibody test to determine whether you personally have sufficient remaining antibodies, or would benefit from another vaccine. In Barcelona, it is possible for under 100 euros.
- nradov 4y ago
  There is no evidence-based clinical standard to determine what level of antibodies is "sufficient". Such tests are not useful for most patients and fail to account for cellular immunity. I am not discouraging anyone from getting a booster but the timing should be based on other criteria. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
pandeiro 4y ago
specto 4y ago
This is anecdotal, and I still plan to get the latest booster soon, but I have had pain in my left chest since the first covid vaccine. I went to a doctor who ran an EKG but they said everything was functioning correctly. Maybe someone knows if I should get a second opinion? I can no longer sleep on my left side since then as it causes the pain to increase, so I don't believe it is related to myocarditis.
- esperent 4y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that and I hope it turns out to be nothing. It's important to remember that you are n=1 and the timing could be a coincidence. It could be the vaccine. It could be stress from the pandemic causing angina. It could be lifestyle (do you exercise every day, eat healthily, sleep well, manage stress? - if not then angina in your 30s/40s is common). It could even, as happened to a friend of mine, be a nerve issue in your chest muscles that's completely unrelated to your heart (aside: my friend was extremely relieved by this diagnosis which took quite a while to come by).
- oifjsidjf 4y ago
  Well it's a good thing there is no important organ in your chest.
- matthewwolfe 4y ago
  Not really answering your question, but after one of the boosters I had ~1 month of abnormal heartbeat and was hospitalized. My chest also felt uneasy, somewhat painful, and I could feel my heart double beating irregularly. Best answer I got was that the vaccine caused inflammation in my heart which caused that issue. Luckily it has since cleared up but I occasionally feel weird feeling in my chest. Could also be stress/anxiety
guelo 4y ago
Any time we figure out something new related to COVID19 it is used to justify everybody's political axe grinding and conspiracy theories. Science takes awhile and it will keep trudging on no matter what our cocksure overreactions are.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
What causes this? Strong immune response? Does any strong immune response have a chance of causing this?
pmoriarty 4y ago
"People face a much higher risk of developing myocarditis from Covid infection than the vaccines, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The risk of myocarditis from Covid is 100 times higher than developing the condition after Covid vaccination, according to a recent paper in Nature Reviews Cardiology."[1] [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/though-rare-moderna-covid-vaccine-recipients-have-higher-risk-of-heart-inflammation-than-pfizer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/though-rare-moderna-covid-va...
ldh0011 4y ago
A lot of the discussion on vaccine merit here seems to be exclusively around the relative risks of getting myocarditis for vaccinated, unvaccinated+covid, and vaccinated+covid. I've seen a few different studies linked that point to different results. Some indicate higher risk for unvaccinated+covid than vaccinated for all groups, some indicate the risk of myocarditis in young males (my demographic, fwiw) is higher from vaccines than from covid. I don't really understand why so much focus is put on myocarditis though when it seems to be incredibly rare for all groups. This was a covid vaccine, not a myocarditis vaccine. Given the other negative effects of covid that are well documented, and especially the possibility of long-term debilitation from covid, I'd have felt secure in getting the vaccine even if I'd known at the time of getting it that it increased the risk of myocarditis by say a whole order of magnitude (which as far as I can tell isn't the case). That said, I don't think it should have been mandated and my gut feeling is that more people would have been convinced of its efficacy had it not been.
jesterson 4y ago
Finally. Hopefully truth comes out as a result of this.
t0bia_s 4y ago
It is horrifying that we have to do those studies after mass distribution. Which proves experimental status of those mRNA vaccines. Btw, those studies will be irrelevant and not trusted if will be made by same companies that pushing vaccines.

393 points by gjsman-1000 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago
This was fixed, thank you!

vaxitgood 4y ago

scohesc 4y ago

hitpointdrew 4y ago

Seems like this should have been a requirement before any emergency use authorization, and certainly before any mandates. The fact that this research is just now being done ought to be enough to immediately revoke the FDA emergency use authorizations and pull the product from the shelves. The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at every level. The erosion of trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect consumers has alone done exponentially more damage than the virus it self. We now have victims of vaccine injury so scared of societal backlash they don't speak out, and doctors so scared of losing their license/job they ignore the evidence in front of them.

GuB-42 4y ago
I think most people misunderstand the point of emergency use. It was an emergency. At the time the vaccine got authorized, we were in a middle of a pandemic, millions of people with no immunity were getting sick, and we couldn't stop the spread even with heavy restrictions. It was clear that we will all have some immunity eventually. The point of the emergency use of vaccine was to give people immunity in a way that wasn't as bad at getting sick. Wait too much, and the vaccine would have been mostly useless. It was a game of how much uncertainty we allow vs how much more deaths if we do nothing. And I think the (fairly conservative) bet saved millions, maybe we could have saved a bit more if we actually vaccinated people before the end of phase 3. We are now in the end game, and the rules have changed. We are now almost all immunized in one way or another, the virus is now optimized for immune escape instead of raw speed, thankfully making it less deadly in the process. Because of that, the way we approach vaccination needs to change too. We can't compare today's situation with the beginning of 2021.
wrycoder 4y ago
As soon as the EUAs were issued, the vaccine manufacturers shut down clinical trial followup and, in many cases, allowed vaccination of the control branch of the trials. Same for Paxlovid, where support for independent trials was refused.
- throwaway049 4y ago
  'allowed vaccination of the control branch' People in the control branch were told they were controls so that they had the option to get the newly-authorized vaccine for real. Standard practice for trials that go well.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    And so the long term effects of the treatment are uncontrolled. I think it's standard practice for therapeutics, but not for vaccines?
- pieter_mj 4y ago
  I, probably with many others, didn't realize this could be the consequence of an EUA until you mentioned it here. Thank you.
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    It's not specific to EUA, this is commonly done when a Phase 3 trial shows a clear benefit. Essentially, once you're sure a medicine confers a real benefit, it becomes unethical to deny it to the control branch any longer.
- oezi 4y ago
  Citation?
throwaway5959 4y ago
Still glad I took my chances with the vaccine: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/briefing/omicron-deaths-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/brie...
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Seeing how family who got infected prior to vaccine availability are still suffering brain fog and lack of energy even now, I am too. The long term effects of covid concern me far more than those of the vaccine do.
  - twerkmonsta 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Enginerrrd 4y ago
      I'm glad the emergency use authorization allowed people who are interested to get the vaccine. I don't think mandates were ever appropriate, and I think people should also have had a right to NOT get the vaccine. The emergency use authorization seemed absolutely like the appropriate course of action given the circumstances.
  - vikingerik 4y ago
    Remember the right comparison regarding apparent long-Covid: What proportion of people would self-report brain fog and lack of energy anyway, with nothing to do with Covid?
    - AnthonBerg 4y ago
      This sort of claim has been made after a study was released that took the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as the source of thruth for whether people had gotten COVID-19. This sort of claim can’t be made on that basis because a lot of people do not produce antibodies after infection. Paper: “Predictors of Nonseroconversion after SARS-CoV-2 Infection” – https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article Abstract: “Not all persons recovering from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection develop SARS-CoV-2–specific antibodies. We show that nonseroconversion is associated with younger age and higher reverse transcription PCR cycle threshold values and identify SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in the nasopharynx as a major correlate of the systemic antibody response.” Please note that this was already known when the study which is taken to show that people are imagining long COVID was published. It’s not a good study. Quite a bit of research has been done since then which further pins down the fact that long COVID is very real and how to diagnose it with biomarkers, which turn out to correspond very well with people saying that a SARS-CoV-2 infection messed them up. Please also consider how harshly judgemental it appears when someone accuses a large number of people of imagining or making up a severe and disabling condition. You have to be very certain.
yucky 4y ago
The actual FDA approval letter[0] calls out in the document that all long term testing will not be completed until May 2027. Pointing that out has always gotten one branded as an antivaxx conspiracy nutter, rather than a person who might want to ensure that, well, long term testing data is actually in before injecting something into their bodies. [0] https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
- bluGill 4y ago
  > long term testing data is actually in before injecting something into their bodies. You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. There may be concerning long term effects, but keep persepcive, the worst possible case is still better than the known case of COVID. And of course long term studies on COVID are also still in progress with all signs pointing to even more bad effects of COVID coming out in the coming years.
  - yucky 4y ago
    You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. That is actually yet to be determined, which is the point. And I only mean that as it relates to specific demographic cohorts, not overall. If I were elderly, diabetic, immunocompromised etc. I don't think I'd hesitate. But the data I've seen on my demographic cohort is a toss-up at best, or even shows the vaccine to be riskier.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    > You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long term effects of the vaccine might be. You don't know that, because we don't know what the "long term effects of the vaccine" actually are.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      That's true in both directions.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> Seems like this should have been a requirement before any emergency use authorization Well... if you think that there's a case for an emergency use authorization, then you kind of can't wait to determine long-term risks. If there's a Covid epidemic threatening to kill millions of people in 2019, you can't wait for a study of long-term consequences that terminates in 2027. You have to decide with the information you have in 2019. Was there a case for an emergency use authorization? Covid did in fact kill millions of people, so arguably yes. > ... and certainly before any mandates. Yeah, there I'm with you.
ivraatiems 4y ago
> The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at every level. Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/06/covid-19-vaccines-saved-estimated-20-million-lives-1-year https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/06/covid-19... > The erosion of trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect consumers has alone done exponentially more damage than the virus it self. Source needed. Reading these comments, one would think nobody ever died of COVID. One would think we didn't have hospitals crammed to the gills with them.
- anon291 4y ago
  > Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved: There is no reason to expect 20 million people in the United States would have died if we had taken a european approach to vaccination approvals.
  - frant-hartm 4y ago
    What was different in EU? Didn't we approve the same vaccines few weeks later?
    - anon291 4y ago
      In certain countries of the EU, boosters are not approved for younger people.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      The president was not promoting snake oil, for example.
      - LilBytes 4y ago
        Kind way of describing bleach.
  - 4y ago
queuebert 4y ago
Covid has killed millions. How many have died of myocarditis? While I agree with your sentiment, it's hyperbolic to claim the vaccine has done "exponentially more damage than the virus".
- anon291 4y ago
  - flir 4y ago
    Well that's surgery out the window.
  - TehCorwiz 4y ago
    Chemo Therapy is literally poisoning you just enough to kill the cancer. The anti-arthritis medications I take cause terrible side effects. These options are still better than the underlying problems. Throwing out pithy feel good quotes doesn't capture the nuance of the line that doctors walk when trying to treat illnesses. "Do no harm" is the ideal. In reality it's to do less harm than the disease.
    - chedca21 4y ago
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Ioannidis was wrong, though. Drastically so. Analyzing excess deaths make it very clear it's not the same severity as severe flu; see the chart half-way down on https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm. At the time, he wrote (https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...): > Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop? It did exactly that.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
[flagged]
- Fomite 4y ago
  Flu shots target several strains of one virus, not several viruses. There is no credible epidemiologist who wouldn't call the COVID-19 vaccines a vaccine. And there are a number of vaccines with limited reduction in transmission but effectiveness against more severe outcomes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
UncleOxidant 4y ago
Isn't he risk of myocarditis actually higher if you get infected with covid compared with getting a covid vaccine? https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
- Fomite 4y ago
  It is. With the exception of a very narrow age range of young men, the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease alone, even ignoring all other outcomes.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    > the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease alone Wait, what? As in people should just take it as a prophylactic for heart disease, without even taking covid into consideration? It seems like this would be shouted from the rooftops if it were true.
    - Fomite 4y ago
      No - it's protective against negative COVID-19 outcomes just if you consider cardiovascular outcomes, ignoring all the others.
  - wiredearp 4y ago
    Young men on the other hand appear to face the biggest increase in COVID related heart attacks according to https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked-to-spike-in-heart-attacks/ https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked..., so perhaps the vaccine remains their best option.
    - Fomite 4y ago
      Indeed. In that group, it's merely...murky...rather than "This is definitively a bad idea".
    - 4y ago
spfzero 4y ago
It also seems like, in the absence of assurance of long-term safety, you would recommend the vaccine for at-risk groups only. It's known now that the risk to young people (under 19) is minimal: IFR < 3/1,000,000. And that was during the much more dangerous early strain of Covid-19, not the ones circulating now. Yet here we are in 2022 with a recommendation from the CDC to vaccinate ages 5 and up, regardless of health condition.
- xracy 4y ago
  It is wild to me that people look at a number like 3/1,000,000 and don't think wow, that's 1900 Children who could die from something we have a vaccine for, that actively prevents the cause. Also, can you imagine losing a child to something that was preventable? You can play numbers and statistics all day, but we're talking about children's lives. You're probably not a parent? But for reference, go find examples of people who are parents that have lost children to some cause, and see what they're doing now? I would bet 9/10 times they're trying to prevent that from happening to others.
  - dwmbt 4y ago
    same. it's also interesting that many of the folks commenting are not likely to be in the most vulnerable group at risk of developing myocarditis from the vaccine [0] -- that unfortunate category is one that i belong to. as a young man, i spoke about this risk nearly a year ago to the tee [1]. since then, i've also found out i am particularly vulnerable, as i had a history of heart issues as a young child (heart murmer -> arrhythmia). it will be nice to see more data available, but i don't regret any of the vaccines in the slightest. there are plenty of comments here that speak to the general age recommendation other countries have provided, but i have yet to see people connect the other MAJOR group of people that should, by all means, totally, 100% consider getting their nth vaccination -> anyone with a comorbidity! if you are a young man with diabetes, the risks you face from the vaccine vs a covid infection are no longer as murky. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221924#29223881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221924#29223881
  - 4y ago
oezi 4y ago
No, that gets it totally backwards. The miniscule risks of the vaccine are blown out of proportion by bad reporting and people reading the statistics wrong. In converse: we should have skipped phase 3 trials (effectivity) and should have started vaccination after safety was approved. If anything the vaccination campaign has shown that sometimes acting fast can be tremendously helpful.
- 35amxn35 4y ago
  [dead]
speeder 4y ago
I think now I can finally write this in public: I didn't take COVID vaccine at all, because for coincidental reasons, my dad ended taking it first. Despite the fact he is already 50+ he had really severe, but thankfully mostly temporary cardiac side effects (mostly, because even months later he needed to go to his cardiologist and change his cardiac-related medicine, because since the vaccine his blood levels changed and he kept having weird symptoms). Since my dad had his health go so poorly after the vaccine, I decided to not risk it, specially considering my existing conditions.
dempseye 4y ago
The erosion of trust is actually a good thing, because those institutions are undeserving of trust.
TheBigSalad 4y ago
You do realize the virus was like super deadly and stuff, right?

origin_path 4y ago

I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Some time in 2021 there was a story about COVID vaccines and heart issues here on HN. The comments filled up with people saying that ever since they'd got their shots they were experiencing new heart-related symptoms they'd never had previously like permanently racing heartbeats, palpitations/fluttering, inability to do exercise and more. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to re-find that discussion. I also have a good friend who works in IT who had a heart attack in the weeks after his shots, but he refused to believe that's what happened and never went in to get diagnosed (the symptoms were an exact match however). Some rough calculations indicate the numbers affected by this kind of (hopefully) low level heart damage seem much higher than claimed. They say of the "hundreds of millions" of shots there are only 1000 cases of diagnosed heart damage from the vaccines. Call it 1000/100,000,000 or one in a million. There are approx 5M readers of Hacker News per month, so far less per day. Of those only a tiny handful have accounts and post comments. If their numbers are right then there should be ~no HN commenters with post-vaccine heart problems but this thread filled up with people posting their own experiences of such a thing. Then there's also the other health problems. My gfs friends who took it have been complaining that they seem to get sick with colds/fluey things way more frequently since the shots, I heard similar complaints from a couple of old coworkers. One of those girls complaining of frequent sickness also reported disrupted menstruation but the doctors have ignored it all because as far as they are concerned, the vaccines are 'perfectly safe'.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I, anecdotally, can report the same. Anecdotally, it seems doctors are drowning in too much paperwork already to be bothered filing reports, as well as suffering from denial that this could be an issue (also preventing filing a report).
rozap 4y ago
Me too. A few days after the latest booster I had some really weird heart palpitations while resting, and I was feeling dizzy with chest/shoulder pain after some moderate exercise. I've stopped exercising which sucks, but will ease back into it. But there's a history of arrhythmia in my family (heart issue killed my dad at a young age), so that's probably a big risk factor, and I'm in the "young male" risk group. I don't know if I should keep getting boosters or risk a potentially worse outcome from covid, which I haven't had yet, though I've been very exposed to.

sfusato 4y ago

Norway recommends booster doses for 65+ [0], Denmark for 50+ [1], Australia for 50+ [2], Sweeden for 65+ [3], Finland for 65+ [4]. United States recommends booster does for 5+ [5]. "The (Florida) State Surgeon General now recommends against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old." [6] [0] https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirus-immunisation-programme/coronavirus-vaccine/ https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirus-immunisation-p... [1] https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Vaccination-against-COVID-19 https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Vaccination-against... [2] https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022/08/atagi-recommendations-on-the-use-of-a-booster-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine.pdf https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022... [3] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/vaccination-against-covid-19/order-of-priority-for-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency... [4] https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-recommends-coronavirus-vaccine-booster-for-older-people-and-risk-groups-this-autumn https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-recommends-coronavirus-... [5] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-t... [6] https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221007-guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-doc.pdf https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Worth noting, the Florida Surgeon General's opinion was lambasted in the mainstream media as him embracing conspiracy theories (and there is some interesting added context there as to why they believe so). Which... maybe two things are true at once. Perhaps he was - but also, perhaps his stance is not that radical. Radical compared to most Surgeon Generals in the United States; but on an international level? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-covid-vaccines-desantis-surgeon-general/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-c... https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-10-12/scientists-dispute-the-floridas-surgeon-generals-latest-covid-19-vaccine-guidance-for-young-men https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-10-12... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/11/medical-experts-reject-florida-surgeon-generals-covid-vaccine-guidance-00061352 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/11/medical-experts-rej... https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-pan-analysis-floridas-surgeon-general-posted-covid/story?id=91294952 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-pan-analysis-florid... https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/10/15/they-are-right-what-floridas-surgeon-general-got-wrong-letters/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/10/15/they-are-right-w...

taolegal 4y ago

The same people who wouldn't be charitable with, say, Exxon, are bending over backwards to defend global pharmaceuticals. Exxon has an interest in minimizing (disregarding) the harmful effects of their products and same goes for Pfizer & friends who's got every govt funneling money to them seemingly without limit.

sn0w_crash 4y ago
Remember Exxon has duped those same people into thinking they are a “good” company They rank higher than Tesla on ESG ratings. Yes, Exxon.
- taolegal 4y ago
mberning 4y ago
It’s incredible how they managed to rehab their image almost overnight. Anybody remember the bextra scandal? Yeah, these are the same corrupt corporations.
- lispisok 4y ago
  We went from finding out pharma companies exploded the opiate epidemic to people getting tattoos of the brand of covid vaccine they got in a few years. Just because pharma companies make some useful products does not make them good actors. Of course Pfizer is going to say everybody needs another covid booster shot. Every time they convince people they need another it's billions in revenue.
  - 2-718-281-828 4y ago
    do you have a link? google just leads to stuff about how long to wait with a tattoo after vaccination.
    - 4y ago

robomartin 4y ago

One of my kids, 15 at the time, was one of the reported cases of myocarditis. At the time of his hospitalization he was one out of 700 cases. He was in the hospital for two weeks. While under observation after his release, we have not seen indications of lasting damage. No way to know what the future holds. So far, so good. We are still not anti-vax at all. In fact, I might go for my next booster today. The one thing that angers me is that this incident cost us $10K. Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400 PER MONTH, did not cover it. We have no recourse whatsoever for this incident and any future care requirements.

arein3 4y ago
- sfusato 4y ago
  There's plenty of would-do-it-again testimonials from a hospital bed caused by a vaccine injury/side effect. There's a famous Mark Twain quote that comes to mind.
  - arein3 4y ago
    A theory proposed by Charles Darwin comes to mind.
    - lob_it 4y ago
      Was that "empathy equals manufactured crisis cubed"? Science is hard :p
  - floor2 4y ago
    Making the statistically best choice is still the best choice even if you get an undesired outcome. Good poker players can lose all their chips at the table to an unlucky draw and walk away knowing that they made the right play and that they'd do it again, even if they got unlucky on the river card. Good basketball coaches will still draw up plays to get the ball into the hands of their best shooter at the end of the game even if they miss sometimes. If you're choosing between option A that has a 0.0001% chance of hurting you and option B that has a 10% chance of hurting you, and you choose A and still get hurt, that doesn't mean you made the wrong choice or that if you have it to do over again you should choose B.

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

Cool, now what's the incidence of Myocarditis and similar after COVID-19 infection? It's possible that such a vaccine causes a number of such cases, and still prevents a much larger number of them. In fact it also seems to be true in this case. Discussing the vaccines out of this context, is scaremongering. You're much better off taking your chances with the COVID-19 vaccine than taking your chances unvaccinated. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001957 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001957

hitpointdrew 4y ago
According to this study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ there is no increase in Myocarditis cases among unvaccinated people who have contracted Covid-19. This study tracked 196,992 people which is a huge number, so the data here is quite good and clear. Contracting Covid-19 does not put you at increased risk for Myocarditis, the same cannot be said when evaluating a population that simply received the vaccination.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Now, to balance between you and the OP: Great, Covid looks like it won't give me myocarditis. It can still kill me, though. So now we have to balance a "may give me myocarditis" vaccine against a "may kill me, but won't give me myocarditis" virus. You can't make the trade-off solely on myocarditis.
  - sfusato 4y ago
    You forgot the "may give me myocarditis (and covid might still kill me)" on one end of the balance though.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Then we have to account for the much reduced risk of that though. sure it can, but relative risk is important. Covid when vaccinated is far more likely to kill you than all possible combinations of the vaccine and whatever else.

marsven_422 4y ago

TurkishPoptart 4y ago

[flagged]

chedca21 4y ago
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants-55-years-process-foia-request-over-vaccine-data-2021-11-18/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  This is from a year ago. Please provide some context to your reply.

nradov 4y ago

One mouse study found that vaccine injection without aspiration did significantly increase the risk of adverse cardiac events such as myocarditis. That research hasn't been reproduced in humans but this area deserves further investigation. As per CDC guidelines, US healthcare providers don't routinely aspirate prior to intramuscular injection. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab941 https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab941 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43440-022-00361-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43440-022-00361-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-141119 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-141119 https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/administration.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/admi...

ambicapter 4y ago
aspiration here means?
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  It means after inserting the needle you draw back on the plunger to see if any blood is drawn into the syringe. If so it means you hit a vein and should reposition the needle because the shot is meant to go into the muscle rather than directly into a vein.
chedca21 4y ago
And young male athletes with the greatest development of blood supply in the deltoid represent the most common demographic affected by acute cardiovascular injury post vaccine. Coincidence? The vaccines were not built to be aspirated, once the plunger is up they can not be reset. It represents a fundamental lapse in standard harm reduction. Also "wait 15 mins to see if emergency care is needed" could well have been replaced by allergy screening given before the injection. Many thousands of cases of anaphylaxis from the shot have been documented some of which were fatal, all avoidable with allergy screening which is practically free.
- AnthonBerg 4y ago
  I have asked for aspiration when I was vaccinated, all four times. I’ve had Pfizer and Moderna. It was no problem. There exist syringes which the injection cannot be aspirated with, but those weren’t used when I was being vaccinated. — Strong agreement on the concern about deltoid vasculature. (I have direct, lived experience with someone at risk of death from a substance going into a capillary which was supposed to stay under the skin on injection. It happens. It’s real. Some doctors will claim it’s “impossible”, which is obviously false when you look into it. The datasheet that came with the injector needles even state that they’re “over 99.5 accurate in delivering a subcutaneous injection”. I forget the exact phrasing. It means that statistically, 1 in 200 injections tends to go into a capillary.) — Also, it’s interesting to look into the reasons why aspiration was removed from standard practice. In a nutshell, it’s because of two things: 1: Some syringes exist which cannot be aspirated with. 2: Aspiration can be painful for infants and is tricky to perform because they are small and they struggle. These are the reasons why aspiration was essentially removed from clinical practice. Really. Those are the reasons. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s obviously harmful that aspiration was stopped. The papers the grandparent post links to are good.

ivraatiems 4y ago

I would just like us all to stop pretending that any of one's fear of COVID or skepticism of vaccines or distrust of whoever or whatever is about rational calculated risks. It's about how we feel, so let's talk about that. Look, everyone is scared of doing something until they're scared of not doing it. Everyone distrusts government until they trust it, and distrusts pharma until they trust it. Some people will wear their mask in the grocery store even though it's a cloth mask that's as good as doing nothing because now it feels weird not to. Some people won't take the COVID vaccine but they'll happily take remdesivir and ivermectin. (Who do you think makes remdesivir and ivermectin?) Some people will happily go to an indoor comic convention that's an hour's drive from them, but not to an outdoor wedding, because it would mean getting on a plane (this actually happened with a family member of mine and I am not over it). All of which is to say that what people are really doing is going with their gut. If your gut instinct is "COVID's not a big deal", then of course taking an emergency-use-authorized vaccine for it seems risky. If your gut instinct is "COVID is dangerous and deadly", you'll take anything you can get. Now that things are subsiding, and the fear is waning, I read an article like this and I think "hmm, that does seem bad, we should look into it, but also I am gonna keep doing what I'm doing and getting my COVID vaccine because it seems like it's helping." On the other hand, you have people who are literally dying of COVID who are still relieved they were able to dodge getting the vaccine because it felt scary to get a not-fully-tested drug. So I'm pro-vaccine because they seem like a good idea and my experiences with them (four shots so far) have been positive, in that my side effects were limited and I know there were situations where I could have gotten COVID and I didn't. (And when I did get COVID, it was extremely mild.) Who's to say how I'd have felt if I were one of the few cases of myocarditis out there? Who's to say how I would've felt if I'd had mild COVID and recovered from it pre-vaccine? What if I'd been hospitalized with COVID pre-vaccine? Can we just admit this isn't about logic or statistics, and never was? It was always a persuasion game either way.

sokoloff 4y ago
Having some uncertainty around novel things seems reasonable. We were all uncertain around COVID and around new vaccines using a novel mechanism. People balanced those uncertainties differently. I took the course of asking people I generally trusted for their opinion and concluded that taking the vaccines (3 for me so far, plus a bout of naturally-acquired resistance via infection) was indicated. There were other doctors whom I knew before COVID was a thing who were recommending ivermectin. If that was your doctor, why wouldn't you believe them just like I believed the doctors that I had more association with? My gut tells me "be skeptical of novel things, but balance that skepticism a bit by asking people whom you trust to have greater knowledge on the topic, ultimately making the best decision you can".

Kalanos 4y ago

my heart has hurt since the vaccine

TheHypnotist 4y ago
Well, case closed then.
bobsmooth 4y ago
I've also had chest pains.

loeg 4y ago

no_butterscotch 4y ago
> This thread is, predictably, a complete shit show. Flag and move on. Is there a way to counter-flag? People who are passionate about discussing some topic may get heated but I don't think that's a good reason for a Reddit-style "thread locked by mods".
- generalizations 4y ago
  You can 'vouch' for the thread (or a comment), but only after it's been marked as flagged. Personally I think that's unbalanced, since flags accumulate for a longer and more visible period than when a thread can be vouched for.
preordained 4y ago
Nope. Let discussion happen as it will in the cold light of day.
warning26 4y ago
Well you see, my [insert relative] had [bad thing happen] thus proving that [antivax talking point]. I've summarized every comment in this thread to save you some time for your busy monday morning.
- generalizations 4y ago
  Not really, unless you're only reading the threads that match your bias. Most of the higher-voted top-level comments are fairly substantial...unlike yours.

coinbasetwwa 4y ago

not_good_coder 4y ago

The developer of the vaccine should not sponsor this adverse effects trial.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Careful, the news told me that's what conspiracy theorists would say.
Sugimot0 4y ago
It's kind of sad cause ideally the company using a portion of the money they made on the product, to study adverse effects from the product, is the responsible and transparent thing to do. I wonder what options there are for ensuring/verifying that this kind of research is not swayed or influenced by the sponsors.

coinbasetwwa 4y ago

[flagged]

tibbydudeza 4y ago
Polio - people have forgotten rows of kids in iron lungs - perhaps you should read some history books and forget the crypto.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  Smallpox and other random stuff exists too what does that have to do with this conversation?
- nomel 4y ago
  How is polio related to covid?
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    That vaccines actually work.
    - nomel 4y ago
      I don't think polio and kids is a good example here, since the COVID vaccine isn't sterilizing like polio, meaning boosters are required, which were never approved for kids because they failed to prove reasonable efficacy. Most kids haven't been vaccinated for COVID in years, and have little protection against it, beyond the continuous exposure now present in the school systems.
- sfusato 4y ago
  I highly recommend "Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History".

alerighi 4y ago

I think that all this COVID stuff was everything opposite than using science, starting from the people, including government, taking of "trusting science". Science is not a religion, and we don't have to believe in it. Instead we need to be critic, conduct experiments, evaluate our thesis, put everything into discussion. Something we didn't, because you are a fool if you have doubts about vaccines, if you talk about negative effects, they are 100% safe and you are an ignorant. This is the contrary of doing science. We didn't studied these vaccines enough, we didn't take for serious people lamenting adverse reactions, we did hide the news about that because we feared people not taking the vaccine. Is this science? It's not. If you look at the news, vaccines are 100% safe and doesn't have any side effect. You ask people that got that, you get another opinion. Me too after the third dose (that I wouldn't had got if I wasn't forced to do so by our "democratic" government, no wonder here in Italy last elections won the "fascists", if these are the democratic people) I had serious side effects, I was basically not feeling well for a week. To take into prospective, when I got COVID in March 2020 when it was still a new thing I only got a slight fever for two days, nothing compared of the effect of the vaccine itself...

TurkishPoptart 4y ago
Correct, political science displaced science so quickly. Dark days are ahead unless the public is informed and able to resist. How did they force you to take a booster? Was it in order to keep your job?
leetrout 4y ago
> I had serious side effects, I was basically not feeling well for a week Would you care to elaborate? I had really bad brain fog.
- nomel 4y ago
  Not him, but I had arm pain for over a year, under the injection, along with extreme weakness in a particular muscle/motion, from the first shot. I couldn’t sleep on that side at all, and could barely sleep on the other. It eventually went away, but I was terrified it was permanent. I did not get the boosters. I’ve had people say I’m anti-vax, from this.

Guthur 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Some added information: Some might wonder, won't the US government pay me if I am injured (as unlikely as that is)? For example, the young man the article talks about as having been injured? Yes - there is a fund, the CICP (Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program). However, your odds of getting paid are basically nil, as an adult; due to an extremely high standard for proving causation, lack of awareness, and limited claim time (1 year from date of vaccination). So if you have a long-term effect after, say, 3 years needing compensation, you won't be paid. "As of October 1, 2022, the CICP has partially compensated one COVID-19 countermeasure claim. There are potentially additional expenses to be calculated for this claim, therefore, the claim is still in the “Pending” compensation status. Forty-seven COVID-19 countermeasure claims have been denied compensation because the standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered injury was not sustained. Six COVID-19 countermeasure claims, all of which are COVID-19 vaccine claims, have been determined eligible for compensation and are pending a review of eligible expenses. One eligible claim is the result of anaphylaxis, and five claims are the result of myocarditis." Six payouts as of October 1st, 2022. https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data

shingle 4y ago

I can add my experience to this thread, as I was diagnosed with "atypical" pericarditis a little over a week after my first Pfizer shot. This started with chest pains, gradually increasing over the course of a day or two before I went to the hospital. I had to ask them to test for myopericarditis, because they were pretty much only considering an embolism or a panic attack. In that sense I was lucky that I had read a paper a month or so before, indicating young men (such as myself) as having an increased risk after Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccination. After diagnosis I had to go through a 3-month medication regimen which, I'll be honest, wasn't all that fun for my intestinal tract. Thankfully I was deemed healthy after half a year, with low probability of lasting damage. Yet, the psychological weight of being confronted with heart disease in your mid-twenties is heavy. My opinions on vaccinations haven't really changed, though I think the legal and societal pressure to get everyone vaccinated was out of line and that opinion has gotten stronger. Especially after knowing that vaccination doesn't affects transmission as much as they hoped, I expected them to focus much more heavily on the at-risk groups, but that didn't happen. The worst part about all of this though is the obstinate denial my cardiologists had of any possible relation between my Pfizer shot and the pericarditis. They'd point to the fact that young men can develop myopericarditis without vaccination. This is true, though it's almost always the result of an infection, and in my region of the world the vast majority of these cases result from flu infections. However, when I had my diagnosis there were barely any flu cases in the country, it just wasn't the season, and most of all I wasn't ill. Pointing to the close proximity to the vaccination was met with immediate and absolute denial. I think that's what bothered me most: I did my part, I tried to protect society by getting a shot, but when confronted with negative fall-out I had to fight for a diagnosis and was pretty much laughed out of the room for suggesting a relation to the booster. I don't think I've processed this yet. It really feels like I did everything I was told, giving up much of my hobbies, social life etc., but when my health was on the line... "Ho pal, can't be saying anything that could be contorted into criticism of vaccination". Little of it seemed "fair".

oliv__ 4y ago
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midislack 4y ago

Conspiracy theorists keep being proved correct. Experts say, that’s dangerous.

phtrivier 4y ago

Just so we now for next time: what is the proper way to express concerns about _this_ kind of things with enough nuance and moderation so as not to be automatically considered an anti-scientist tin foil hat ? What is the scientifically acceptable way to phrase "I'm not concerned about BigPharma planting 5G chips in my future children's eyeballs to turn them into communist ; but I'm very concerned about blind spots during testing and biases in protocol and just plain bad luck that made us miss something ?" Maybe I just write too much software for a living, but my only certitude was that something, somewhere, was going to break. At least I can TDD the hell out of my paranoia. Don't let me write health policy, ever. Sidenode: if this kid had chosen the wrong profession in the wrong country, he would now be facing either "getting a couple of other shot" or "loosing its job". If he had made a tiktok video about his problems, or a facebook post, or a twitter thread, etc... at some point it would have been flagged, and it would have only garnered the attention of the worst possible scammers. And, worst of all, I'm pretty sure his grandmother would now refuse to get boosted. Talk about loose-loose :/

daliz 4y ago
You are completely right. People who expressed concerns or some doubts just a few months ago were attacked, downvoted, silenced and socially outcast. This is not science. This is the opposite of science.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  Well, at the peak of the epidemics, there was a whole industry devoted to claiming the most bogus things and preventing the people with the highest risk / benefit ratio from taking their shots. I made fun of the most hilarious of them too. That did not make me any less scared of the "oooops" moment. This will get worse (myocarditis today, menstural cycles tomorrow, maybe strokes and cancer later ?), then worse (vast number of people completely loosing faith into their docs and letting a much worse epidemy settle), then worse, before it gets... well, before life goes on and we mostly forget, as it has ever done and as we ever did, I suppose ?
- tsol 4y ago
  People don't care about being scientifically honest. If we did, more people would be annoyed by internet atheists championing science above all else. Pushing science as the end all be all path to knowledge isn't the wholesome thing it seems. Some people take it too far and turn it into a cult

6nf 4y ago

We knew this 18 months ago when Israel first released their results after vaccinating 7 million of their people. But talking about it on Facebook or Youtube got you yeeted.

puffoflogic 4y ago

Why bother with expensive research when the HN comment section has it all figured out? The vaccines don't cause myocarditis, and if they do then it's not as bad as what COVID causes, and if it is well COVID also causes it anyways so who cares, and if it doesn't then at least the vaccines stop transmission, and if they don't then at least they save your life, and if they don't then at least we believe The Science! Just a waste of money. The Science is settled.

shadowgovt 4y ago

If the risk of myocarditis after covid vaccination is lower than the risk of hospitalization due to covid infection, mandating vaccination is still good public policy. It ultimately shifts the risk around, it is true, but it still improves the odds of survival for the people who will contract myocarditis also, because there was significant risk of covid crashing the medical infrastructure. This is the part of the story people seem to forget... It wasn't the primary risk of fatalities due to covid that triggered mandatory quarantine and vaccination policies, it was the threat of saturating healthcare facilities to the point where people would die of myriad preventable conditions. In the United States, we are still short-handed because nurses retired and nobody is stepping up to replace them.

nonethewiser 4y ago
The question is whether or not you can ever morally coerce someone to inject something into their body.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's an interesting question but (at least in the US) a culturally very well-settled one. There's an extremely long history of vaccination being required for participation in various aspects of society, from the military to public education. During the pandemic, it broadened to "presence in office." The three tools a society has to defend against rampant disease are hygiene, vaccination, and quarantine. Those who cannot or will not participate in the first two may, if necessary, be handled via the third, and this is pretty bog-standard "How not to have a whole city suffer from typhoid" stuff. As we're talking morality and not the law: there's nothing immoral about "No shirt, no shoes, no service."
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    > It's an interesting question but (at least in the US) a culturally very well-settled one. The fact that people disagree means that it is not.

annadane 4y ago

Lots of suspiciously downvoted comments here.

drummer 4y ago

Here are two books everyone should read: https://archive.org/details/b2136140x https://archive.org/details/b2136140x https://archive.org/details/confessions-of-a-medical-heretic/ https://archive.org/details/confessions-of-a-medical-heretic...

dayvid 4y ago

My main question is if the vaccine side effects are just a much milder version of what would happen if you got COVID as opposed to something vaccine specific. If that's the case, then there would be more myocarditis issues from people not vaccinating. I haven't received a straight answer on this.

mrtesthah 4y ago
>...then there would be more myocarditis issues from people not vaccinating... Yes. Myocarditis seven times more likely with COVID-19 than vaccines https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967801 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967801 Myocarditis Risk 17 Times Higher for Unvaccinated Patients Ages 12-30 Who Get COVID-19 Than COVID-Vaccinated Patients https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/myocarditis-risk-17-times-higher-for-unvaccinated-patients-ages-12-30-who-get-covid-19-than-covid-vaccinated-patients https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/myocarditis-risk-17-ti... Myocarditis risk significantly higher after COVID-19 infection vs. after a COVID-19 vaccine | American Heart Association https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significantly-higher-after-covid-19-infection-vs-after-a-covid-19-vaccine https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significant...
- deleted 4y ago
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- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I wonder why those studies differ from this one, that did not find a higher incidence in myocarditis in COVID patients. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
  - russdill 4y ago
    The numbers in this study end up being relatively small as there are only 200k people involved. "Nine post-COVID-19 patients developed myocarditis".
  - mrtesthah 4y ago

entwife 4y ago

It is possible to get a COVID antibody test to determine whether you personally have sufficient remaining antibodies, or would benefit from another vaccine. In Barcelona, it is possible for under 100 euros.

nradov 4y ago
There is no evidence-based clinical standard to determine what level of antibodies is "sufficient". Such tests are not useful for most patients and fail to account for cellular immunity. I am not discouraging anyone from getting a booster but the timing should be based on other criteria. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/

pandeiro 4y ago

specto 4y ago

This is anecdotal, and I still plan to get the latest booster soon, but I have had pain in my left chest since the first covid vaccine. I went to a doctor who ran an EKG but they said everything was functioning correctly. Maybe someone knows if I should get a second opinion? I can no longer sleep on my left side since then as it causes the pain to increase, so I don't believe it is related to myocarditis.

esperent 4y ago
I'm sorry to hear that and I hope it turns out to be nothing. It's important to remember that you are n=1 and the timing could be a coincidence. It could be the vaccine. It could be stress from the pandemic causing angina. It could be lifestyle (do you exercise every day, eat healthily, sleep well, manage stress? - if not then angina in your 30s/40s is common). It could even, as happened to a friend of mine, be a nerve issue in your chest muscles that's completely unrelated to your heart (aside: my friend was extremely relieved by this diagnosis which took quite a while to come by).
oifjsidjf 4y ago
Well it's a good thing there is no important organ in your chest.
matthewwolfe 4y ago
Not really answering your question, but after one of the boosters I had ~1 month of abnormal heartbeat and was hospitalized. My chest also felt uneasy, somewhat painful, and I could feel my heart double beating irregularly. Best answer I got was that the vaccine caused inflammation in my heart which caused that issue. Luckily it has since cleared up but I occasionally feel weird feeling in my chest. Could also be stress/anxiety

guelo 4y ago

Any time we figure out something new related to COVID19 it is used to justify everybody's political axe grinding and conspiracy theories. Science takes awhile and it will keep trudging on no matter what our cocksure overreactions are.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

What causes this? Strong immune response? Does any strong immune response have a chance of causing this?

pmoriarty 4y ago

"People face a much higher risk of developing myocarditis from Covid infection than the vaccines, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The risk of myocarditis from Covid is 100 times higher than developing the condition after Covid vaccination, according to a recent paper in Nature Reviews Cardiology."[1] [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/though-rare-moderna-covid-vaccine-recipients-have-higher-risk-of-heart-inflammation-than-pfizer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/though-rare-moderna-covid-va...

ldh0011 4y ago

A lot of the discussion on vaccine merit here seems to be exclusively around the relative risks of getting myocarditis for vaccinated, unvaccinated+covid, and vaccinated+covid. I've seen a few different studies linked that point to different results. Some indicate higher risk for unvaccinated+covid than vaccinated for all groups, some indicate the risk of myocarditis in young males (my demographic, fwiw) is higher from vaccines than from covid. I don't really understand why so much focus is put on myocarditis though when it seems to be incredibly rare for all groups. This was a covid vaccine, not a myocarditis vaccine. Given the other negative effects of covid that are well documented, and especially the possibility of long-term debilitation from covid, I'd have felt secure in getting the vaccine even if I'd known at the time of getting it that it increased the risk of myocarditis by say a whole order of magnitude (which as far as I can tell isn't the case). That said, I don't think it should have been mandated and my gut feeling is that more people would have been convinced of its efficacy had it not been.

jesterson 4y ago

Finally. Hopefully truth comes out as a result of this.

t0bia_s 4y ago

It is horrifying that we have to do those studies after mass distribution. Which proves experimental status of those mRNA vaccines. Btw, those studies will be irrelevant and not trusted if will be made by same companies that pushing vaccines.